Epic Games confirms Fortnite is coming to Linux

Epic Games has confirmed it is officially working on bringing Fortnite to Linux, along with support from its Easy Anti-Cheat service. The announcement appeared at the bottom of the company's blog post about the new Epic Games Store, which is also coming to Linux, according to Eurogamer.

Epic said it will work with Linux distribution maintainers on a set of security requirements needed to run Fortnite. The game will arrive on Linux via the Epic Games Store launcher, but only if a critical mass of distribution maintainers is reached.

Easy Anti-Cheat plans to use Linux features including a signed kernel, signed kernel modules, and secure boot with attestation. The company said it will test the announced plans in Fortnite first before making them available to other developers. Epic added that its work will be available to other developers interested in bringing their games to Linux.

Security work builds on existing efforts

Easy Anti-Cheat already supports Linux for some games, including Dead by Daylight, Rocket League, Apex Legends and Elden Ring. However, Epic explained in a separate blog post that many developers choose not to enable it because the Linux implementation could not offer the same level of protection as the Windows implementation.

On Windows, users can be asked to enable features like TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot to create a secure environment once hardware requirements are met. Epic said its security requirements build on work that distribution maintainers already do, and that the more distributions meet these requirements by default, the fewer players will need to change their setup to play.

Epic named Valve specifically, saying the team will continue its open line of communication to support Steam hardware devices to the maximum extent technically possible. There is no timeline for the Linux release at present.